Enough already!

Published February 12. 2013 12:01AM

It wasn't all that long ago when Connecticut could lay claim to a temperate climate. Sure, the changing seasons could bring extremes of cold and heat, but the major weather disasters were few and relatively far between - the 1938 Hurricane, Hurricane Gloria in 1985 (infamous more for causing prolonged power outages than mass destruction), the floods of August 1955 caused by the arrival of consecutive tropical systems, and the Blizzard of 1978.

In the last couple of years, however, tiny Connecticut has found itself repeatedly buffered by Mother Nature. After Connecticut suffered the Northeast region's heaviest snows and most extensive loss of electric power during the recent blizzard, President Obama heeded Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's request and signed a disaster declaration for the state.

Amazingly that was the fifth such declaration during Gov. Malloy's term as governor, barely entering its third year, unprecedented for any administration.

"You learn from each of these, but I think it's time for some other governor to learn," said a weary Gov. Malloy to a reporter over the weekend.

In August 2011 Hurricane Irene hit eastern Connecticut particularly hard, followed by the freak late-October snowstorm that focused its wrath on the western part of the state. This October brought the arrival of the freak Superstorm Sandy, and now the Blizzard of 2013.

The fifth declaration came in January 2011, when heavy snows added to a particularly brutal winter. Remember the roof rakes? How soon we forget.

Add in an incomprehensible tragedy of human making - the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December - and it is certainly an extraordinary string of woe for the state.

Then layer atop all that the state's long-struggling economy and it's enough to cry, "Enough!"

Yet Connecticut citizens have proved a resilient lot, soldiering on after each disaster. There have been many more stories of neighbors helping each other than of unsavory types trying to take advantage of misfortune. Connecticut is getting better at this disaster stuff, opening the shelters, providing information to citizens; it even appears power is returning faster.

But as the governor said, let some other state get some experience. Connecticut is deserving of a tranquil break.